PRISMA Colloquium

What cosmology can tell us about neutrinos

Maria Archidiacono, RWTH, Aachen

The impact of massive neutrinos on cosmological observables comes from a very peculiar effect: light massive neutrinos behave as radiation before their non-relativistic transition, while afterwards they gradually become a matter component. For that reason, combination of high- and low- redshift probes can provide very tight, yet model dependent, constraints on the number of neutrinos and on the neutrino mass sum.
After discussing current and future cosmological constraints on neutrino properties, I will focus on the impact of model dependence. I will argue that scenarios beyond the Standard Model could relax cosmological bounds, easing the possible tension with ground-based neutrino experiments